Thursday, November 6, 2014

I have successfully
completed all the main quests for Belsavis. Now the storyline moves
forward and directs me to a planet known as Voss. In addition, I
unlocked a bonus questline for Hoth. I don't know if I will go and
do these extra quests, but they are good to have around as an option
in the event I need to level up before I can proceed with a main
story quest.

A strange quest on Belsavis involving an imprisoned alien from the Infinite Empire.

Before going to Voss, I went
to the Imperial Fleet to buy some upgrades for my armor and
lightsaber. Due to the flashpoint daily bonuses and the quests I
have been doing, I had a large pile of planetary commendations to
spend. Now I can head to the next planet with some better stats, and
have a slight edge as I take on more challenging enemies.

Voss itself is a beautiful,
strange planet. The trees, plants, and grass all seem like they are
in some sort of eternal autumn. It is a beautiful combination of
nature with old ruins and “modern” Voss civilization. There are
many a familiar looking creature on the planet itself, but I
currently have a bit of a level advantage so there is nothing that
has proven to be much of a threat yet.

The locals are a little unusual, but Voss is a beautiful planet.

Voss is a neutral territory,
with the Empire and Republic butting heads over it in an attempt to
claim it and the indigenous people as allies. It has something to do
with the Voss being force sensitive and having the power to see the
future. Of course, all of this is irrelevant in the long term given
that all of this occurs thousands of years before the movies. Also,
there seems to be a great deal of debate as to if anything beyond the
movies is still canon now that Disney has taken over the Star Wars
franchise.

Given that the original
level cap for SWTOR was level 50, I imagine I am near the end of my
class storyline. I am level 47 and it seems like I don't have much
longer to go before I reach the end. I don't know if there are any
new class quests for the first expansion, but I really doubt it given
that Bioware's budget likely got massive cuts when the game went free
to play.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

I apologize for the lack of updates on
this article. I've been a bit busy lately with a lot of personal IRL
stuff. So now I'm going to try and catch up on what has been going
on in my return to Star Wars: The Old Republic. At the time of
writing this I am currently level 43 and am gradually working my way
through the story for my Sith Warrior.

Day 3, Entry 1:

I finally got a chance to check out the
group finder tool. I got a group for a flashpoint that appeared to
scale with the level of players in the group. Anyone from level 15
to 55 or so appears to be able to sign up and get a daily planetary
commendation bonus. The other dungeons that have a level range for
normal mode reward more commendations but it seems to be difficult to
get a group for those.

My group in that particular flashpoint as we fight the last boss.

My group consisted of three DPS (damage
per second) and one healer. The run through that particular
flashpoint was more or less flawless. I didn't get any noteworthy
loot, but I got a great deal of experience points. Every time I've
done a flashpoint with a group, I have managed to level up. The
flashpoint experience boost in the legacy system also helps you level
faster. This would be a great way to level up and possibly stay
ahead of the curve in terms of the level requirement for quests. Of
course, my luck with getting groups is inconsistent which is the only
flaw in that plan.

I wish there was a way to determine how
far away a quest objective is in relation to your current position.
I was trying to head to a quest objective, thinking it was going to
be in a local bunker like it usually is. Almost fifteen minutes
later, I was nearly on the other side of the Belsavis map and still I
had no idea where the marker for my next story quest was taking me.
At the very least, I managed to find a “Quest Hub” that I could
unlock and teleport to with quick travel if needed.

I was browsing the cartel market
earlier and found a vehicle that was on sale. It cost me nearly all
my cartel coins, but it seems to be worth it. Not only is it a cool
looking vehicle, but it also provides more protection from getting
knocked off and stunned. I've included a screenshot of this new
vehicle below.

Finally got a speeder bike at long last. ^_^

I'll add more entries as I have things
worth mentioning. As of right now I have a long way to go before I
reach any end game content or expansion stuff. Given the upcoming
release of the Master Chief Collection and World of Warcraft:
Warlords of Draenor, I doubt I will be able to reach level 55 in time
for the upcoming expansion.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

It turns out that Quesh was
not a new planet, and was just the next place my storyline took me.
After completing my objective there, I found out I now had to go to a
planet called Belsavis. This one I had certainly never been to
before, given the level range put it as the next planet immediately
after clearing Hoth. So now I'm continuing the Sith Warrior story
line, and I've reached level 41. The EXP booster is more effective
than I had first thought yesterday.

The new planet, Belsavis, is
fairly easy on the eye compared to Quesh and Hoth. Belsavis is a mix
of snowy environments and lush meadows and small hills with trees
scattered here and there. It actually reminds me of some parts of
Northrend in World of Warcraft. I've only seen a few parts of this
planet so far, and I look forward to seeing what awaits me as I
explore it further.

Despite the turmoil on the planet, Belsavis is quite pretty.

As far as gameplay mechanics
go, I have noticed a few changes. There are now achievements in the
game, and they are fairly subtle compared to the ones in World of
Warcraft which basically shoot off visual effects all over you when
you earn one. There appear to be a boat load of achievements in Star
Wars: The Old Republic, with some of them awarding Cartel Coins if
the in-game text is to be believed. Also, I don't know if this is a
change from the 1.0 days of this game, but apparently planetary
commendations can now drop off of mobs.

I also decided to check out
Strongholds, as it seemed like they were a big feature in the game
now. I purchased the apartment for five thousand credits, which is
nothing compared to the prices for having a stronghold on Tatooine
(costs 2.5 million credits). As I arrived at my apartment I could
see the clear Empire influence in its design. It was dark and
dreary, but I like the visual effect of the rain on the windows.

Inside your “Stronghold”,
you can completely customize how it looks and what kind of furniture
and decorations there are. Many basic furnishings were handed to me
upon arriving at my apartment, but you can also acquire more unique
items through a variety of methods. Apparently Flashpoints award
some trophies and other decorations for your Stronghold, so I'm
thinking of running a few of those in the near future. That and I
have a quest for completing a Flashpoint when using the Group Finder,
so I suppose I now have several reasons to jump into that content.

This is what the editor looks like in a Stronghold. It allows you to place objects and arrange their positioning.

And this is what it looks like while it is not in edit mode.

Another feature that caught
my eye is Conquest. Conquest appears to be a week long event filled
with objectives and all kinds of rewards for participants. I'm not
sure how it works, but there appears to be a leaderboard of some sort
for guilds on each server. The more the members participate, the
more points that guild gets. At present, I don't know if there are
any rewards for those who rank high on this leaderboard. Today a new
conquest event has started for this week involving a planet known as
Corelia. The objective is to stop the spread of the Rak'ghoul
plague, a nuisance that I remember quite well from leveling on one of
my characters. I have a quest that will allow me to partake but I
don't know if I'm at a high enough level to do anything beyond the
intro quest. At the very least it is worth quite a lot of EXP, so
going there may not be a waste of time.

Day 2, Entry 2:

Not much to report for this
entry. I attempted to use the group finder to do some Flashpoints.
Unfortunately every time I got a group some guy always declined the
invite. This happens all the time in other games like WoW, but those
cases are usually people who went AFK while using the group finder
tool. When you get an invite you have 30 seconds to accept it, but
in SWTOR you have two minutes to accept. In all my cases, someone
deliberately declined the invite. I cannot fathom why you would
queue in the group finder if you weren't sure if you would have time
to do a Flashpoint. I'll attempt to use the group finder another
time.

After running a few low
level Flashpoints solo just for kicks, I set a course for Belsavis to
continue my class storyline and the march toward level 55.

Monday, October 27, 2014

I could tell you what this article will
be about, although you probably know already given what the title is.
However, I thought of a decent and completely unoriginal way to
introduce this feature. So prepare yourself.

A long time ago in a
galaxy far, far away...

(Insert Star Wars Opening
Music Here)

STAR WARS: A RETURN TO THE
OLD REPUBLIC

Several years have passed
since Paul departed

from The Old Republic, in
search of greener pastures.

After seeing the news
about the upcoming expansion,

and after rewatching
several of the older Star Wars films with his family,

Paul decided it was time
to return to The Old Republic and see what had changed.

So Paul took lightsaber in
hand once again and jumped back in,

completely unaware of the
shenanigan riddled misadventures that awaited him...

Forgive me, I couldn't
possibly resist. That said, I decided it was time to go back to Star
Wars: The Old Republic and provide my thoughts on how things have
changed since the game was released back in December 2011. However,
one mere article would not be enough to do this game any justice. As
a result, this return to SWTOR article will be broken up into several
parts. Tentatively, I'm thinking maybe six or seven.

In case you hadn't heard,
there will be an expansion for SWTOR called Shadow of Revan. The
level cap will be increased to 60, and will feature Revan as both the
Empire and Republic seek to put a stop to whatever it is he is
planning on doing. As expected, there will be some new flashpoints
and operations (AKA dungeons and raids) for players to do as well. I
haven't decided if RBFB will be providing coverage of the new
expansion, but time will tell.

Without further ado, let's
get started.

This is a landscape shot of Dromund Kaas I had taken back in 2011.

Day 1, Entry 1:

As many of you know, SWTOR
went free to play awhile back. I remembered reading how limited the
free to play version of the game was, even for former subscribers.
So I decided to pick up a 60 day time card so that I could play the
game without any restrictions. As I tried to log into my account on
the official website, I remembered that I had gotten one of those
authenticators for my SWTOR account. I searched all over the place
for it, but couldn't find it. So I had to go through a few hoops in
order to detach the security key.

When SWTOR went free to
play, a micro-transaction system was put in place that used something
called Cartel Coins. I hope that Cartel Coins can't be used to
purchase raid gear or anything like that, but that remains to be
seen. As I checked my account, I discovered that having an
authenticator attached to my account was giving me 100 free Cartel
Coins a month. As a result, my account had over 2000 Cartel Coins.
So now I basically have free in-game money to use as I see fit. I
never made it to level 50 on any of my characters, so perhaps I could
make use of some EXP boosters if they are available on the in-game
store?

EA is involved in this game, so the fact that micro-transactions came into this game is not surprising at all.

After my account was set up,
I downloaded the SWTOR client and got it installed. It took a minute
to figure out which server my main characters were on given that my
home server known as Thana'vesh was gone, lost to the void when SWTOR
went free to play after the game's population dropped drastically.
Now I am on Shadowlands, which seems to have a population that ranged
from 'light' to 'standard'. I wonder how many players are actively
subscribed to SWTOR now?

When I reached the character
log in screen I selected my Sith Warrior character. Upon logging
into my level 39 character, I was greeted with various messages
talking about stuff that had changed along with updates to the
graphics. My skill tree was reset and at the time of writing this
entry I have yet to set it back. To be honest the first hour or so
of gameplay has just been browsing through all the new stuff. When I
left the game, the legacy system had barely been implemented beyond
being able to gain experience in it.

Now there are a bunch of
systems and mechanics that I barely recognized. I wonder if this is
how a WoW player feels when they return to the game for the first
time in years, because I felt completely overwhelmed as I gazed at
countless amounts of new information, updates, and content. Now
there is reputation, a bunch of legacy perks, and several messages
in my mailbox. Despite the fact that I have not been an active
player since early 2012, Bioware was nice enough to give me various
event gift packages in the mail. This included some anniversary
packages, titles for content updates, five currency tokens for
starter end game gear, and even a astromech companion that was a
reward for Star Wars day (May 4th).

Here is the astromech in question.

I noticed one big change to
the UI as well, which was a giant flashing Cartel Coin which proudly
labeled itself as the in-game store. I browsed around the store and
noticed the wide variety of content that was being sold. Now that
the game has gone free to play, I suppose that they had to do
something to get some money. At present I've only bought a pack of
EXP boosters so that I could try to catch up with whatever the end
game content is.

While we are discussing
Cartel Coins, I noticed that they can be used to purchase things like
inventory slot upgrades and legacy perks at significantly lower costs
than credits. I only have about 110k credits to my name at present,
so Cartel Coins give me another option while I earn more credits.

There is even the option to
fully customize the UI, but the editor does not seem particularly
friendly. So I'll need to play that and decide on what my spec will
be for my Sith Warrior. It could actually take a few hours before
I'm able to get back into the game in terms of actually playing it.
Speaking of the game, I apparently have the first expansion involving
the Hutts completely free of charge. I don't know if this is true or
not, but I saw it listed as a game I own on my account.

When I first saw this on the editor, I had no idea what to make of it.

Day 1, Entry 2:

It took some time, but I
think I finally found a UI setup that I like. I found a good
leveling build for my Sith Warrior as well. After I completed all
that, I headed straight to the Imperial fleet to see if there was
anything I could buy or any skills I could pick up. As I arrived and
left the dock area, I was greeted by many an unusual sight. There
were quite a few vehicles/mounts I had never seen in the game before.
I could have sworn I saw a guy riding around on a small Rancor, but
I must be mistaken as there is no way a creature like that could be a
mount.

One thing that caught me by
surprise was how populated Shadowlands is. I was expecting the fleet
to be rather ghost town-ish, yet that was not the case. I have
included some screenshots to show the population of the game in this
particular area. Of course, the screenshots I had originally taken
didn't register because the SWTOR screencap function is bugged. So
these other images will have to do for now, I'm afraid.

So after looking around I
started visiting vendors as I came across them. Apparently all the
commendations you get from doing quests on planets have now been
consolidated into one currency, and that is a wonderful thing. There
were way too many currencies back when I played, and it is nice to
have only one kind of currency to worry about. To make things even
better, all my commendations were combined so I could afford a new
helmet for myself and one of my AI companions and still have some
more commendations to spend.

I encountered an area which
talked about Strongholds. After reading some of the descriptions, it
sounds like Strongholds is basically player housing. I could easily
afford the apartment on Dromund Kaas, but for now I want to focus on
leveling up my character and continuing the story. There is a lot of
content that a mere level 39 character cannot so much as even glimpse
at, so I have my work cut out for me. Thankfully I do have some EXP
boosters, so that should speed up the process a little. Speaking of
Dromund Kaas, I got an item in my mail which will allow me to create
a weapon if I turn it into a vendor on that planet.

Day 1, Entry 3:

Well the item turned out to
be a waste of time, so I moved on and set a course for Hoth. I still
had a few quests left to finish there and I'm a little under the
recommended level for the next planet in the story. There aren't
many quests, but it should be enough to at least get me to level 40
and possibly half way to 41.

As I landed on Hoth and
started doing some quests, I realized that the gameplay for SWTOR
hasn't really changed much. Kill X amount of bad guys, collect this,
activate that, same old stuff. Compared to WoW, leveling is a little
more challenging given you do have to pick and choose your fights to
some extent. But with a decent spec and a good rotation, the
difficulty is very much manageable.

Even in the distant past, Hoth was a frozen hellhole.

I only wish that the EXP
booster gave more than 25%, but there are other ways to boost how
much EXP I gain. The legacy system has several perks I can purchase
that boost EXP in a variety of activities from class missions to
flashpoints. However, my legacy level is only five so there is only
so much I can purchase. Granted I can use Cartel Coins, but I'm
trying to use mine sparingly.

As I write this, I'm very
close to level 40. In the next entry, I will likely be well on my
way to level 41 and possibly on a new planet.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Destiny has been out for a little while
and, despite some of the issues it faces, it has been very well
received by gamers. People are playing the game everyday, and the
tower always has Guardians coming and going. Every day more and more
players are clearing the Vault of Glass. At present, it seems like
players will have to wait until the release of the first expansion
this December in order to have new content. That said, I figured I
would put together a little wish list of things I want to see changed
or added in Destiny be it in the expansions or sequels.

More
Loot

It's so... beautiful!

They say a picture is worth a thousand
words, and this comic proves that to be true (thanks
Ctrl+Alt+Delete!). Destiny is rather stingy with the loot drops.
There is always something satisfying about seeing a bunch of loot
drop while playing any loot based game like Diablo and Borderlands.
It doesn't matter if the majority of it ends up being junk that you
sell or break down for parts, and I feel like Destiny would benefit
from the same thing.

More loot should drop, all kinds of
loot. Why stop at weapons and armor? Why not have items like
plasteel plating and hadronic essence drop as well? Why not have
ship schematics that can drop from enemies? I feel that Destiny
would benefit from making it rain loot upon the player, and it would
make exploration and just playing the game feel much more satisfying
for loot addicts. Seeing a bunch of engrams in the infamous loot
cave was pretty cool, so why not increase the amount of loot that can
drop?

Performance = Better Chance At Loot

Not the best example since I got rewards, but imagine this image in reverse.

One of the many
issues with loot in Destiny is the sheer cruelty of the RNG.
Granted, RNG is not new when it comes to loot in games. However, I
feel there should be a system in place that rewards skill no matter
what game mode you are playing. It is ridiculous that a player can
do really well in the crucible and get absolutely nothing every
single game, while some guy who consistently gets 0 kills and 18+
deaths while watching Netflix gets showered with loot and exotic
weapons. I feel there should be a system in place that helps prevent
this. Certain crucible medals like killing sprees, strength of the
pack, and killing multiple players in small amounts of time should
boost a player's chance of getting loot at the end of a match. One
medal alone would not boost this chance much, but multiple medals
together would make it much more likely for a PvP diehard to walk out
of a night in the Crucible with a decent little goodie bag of loot.

Even just simply
handing out an engram after each match would feel much more rewarding
for players than the current system. With the way the game is right
now, I don't blame people for not wanting to try in the Crucible
given that their performance in the match does nothing at all beyond
look good in their overall stats. It seems like Destiny really wants
to be a loot game, so why not reward skilled players with some loot?

Better yet, why
not have cosmetic items like class items, shaders, emblems, ships,
and vehicles that can only be acquired by doing consistently well in
the Crucible? Say those who have a certain K/D ratio or have a
certain amount of kills with a particular weapon would be able to buy
exclusive items that other players would see and know instantly that
the wearer is a formidable ally/opponent in the crucible.

More
Dynamic Events

"Stay calm, it can probably smell fear."

The public events are a neat mechanic,
but I feel that there should be more going on out in the exploration
zones of Destiny. There should be more reason to go out there than
to just run generic patrol missions over and over again. For
example, there could be powerful boss level enemies that spawn in
certain areas once a week. These bosses would be difficult, but upon
being killed they would drop plenty of loot for players along with
have a chance to drop class items, shaders, and emblems that could
only be acquired from that particular boss. This system could also
be expanded to having extremely powerful raid level bosses that spawn
on each planet once a month. They would not be easy to kill, but the
reward would make them worth it. Their loot table would include
ascendant material, a chance at exotics, and possible exotics that
can only be acquired from those bosses.

Beyond world bosses, I think that
Destiny should have periodic invasions by other enemies in the game.
For example, say the Vex suddenly show up in the Cosmodrome in large
numbers. Players would be given the option to participate in the
effort to push them back, and they would be highly rewarded at the
end of the event.

More
Enemies

The Darkness - With 100% More Pyramid Ships

There may be lots
of enemies in Destiny, but a lot of them are too similar to one
another. There is little difference in the AI of a Vex Goblin, a
Fallen Dreg, and a Hive Acolyte. So I feel there should be new
enemies added in that keep the player on their toes. Perhaps this
new enemy would be able to switch weapons and then use different
tactics to try and defeat the player. Say there was a Fallen of some
kind that was able to do that. At long range it would try to snipe
the player, but then switch to that more powerful heavy weapon used
by Fallen Archons when the player gets closer. Or perhaps it would
suddenly go invisible and try to ambush the player with a melee
weapon.

That and just
having more enemies to fight would also add variety. This would be a
good time for Bungie to bring in the Darkness and allow Guardians to
fight it directly rather than through the minions. It has been
depicted that there is a fifth enemy lurking out there somewhere, but
this is assuming that hasn't been cut out of the game like so many
other things have been.

More
Locations

Nice place, too bad it's barely used.

Let's face it,
there needs to be more locations to go to and explore. Sure there is
plenty of space to run around in on Earth and all the other planets,
but I feel like those could be expanded to allow players to go to
other areas. There should be some more variety of places to go. As
it stands now, everything in the story seems to always happen in Old
Russia or small parts of other planets. It seems like the same thing
will occur with The Dark Below. If the Hive are trying to prepare
Earth for the return of Crota, why do they keep going back to Old
Russia? Shouldn't they find somewhere else on Earth where there
aren't hundreds of Guardians patrolling everyday?

Also, Mercury
should be added as an explorable PvE environment. It feels like a
waste to have an entire planet dedicated just to small PvP matches.
So if an expansion could add a patrol mission, a strike, and some
story missions there, that would be appreciated.

More
Variety in Weapon Design

Some diversity would be nice...

Exotic weapons
excluded, a lot of weapons basically use the same design only with
different colors. There is little difference in appearance between a
Marshal-A, Galahad-E, and Shadow Price beyond stats and color.
Legendary Weapons should have unique designs of their own that set
them apart from the regular greens and blues. Bungie more or less
does this for armor, so why can't they do that for Legendary quality
weapons? If there is any group of legendary weapons that should have
a unique model, it would be the ones from Vault of Glass. As it
stands now, the only way to tell when someone has Atheon's Epilogue
is when you see a stream of purple bullets being fired, and that is
rather disappointing.

More
Variety in Story Missions

I wonder if the Ghost hates his job.

Go
here, activate this. Go there, kill something. Listen to Peter
Dinklage monologue your ear off. That is basically every single
mission in Destiny. There is no variety and no big moments that a
player can look back on and say: “That was awesome!”. It isn't
like Bungie can't do this, because they clearly can. There are
countless moments throughout all the Halo games made by Bungie that
stood out as memorable experiences. Yet that seems oddly absent from
Destiny beyond that one mission where you get to wield a sword. I
don't really care about what they add, so long as they do something
that mixes things up.

More
Story In The Missions & More Characters

"I wish I'd been given better dialogue, little light."

Despite being
called a story mode, the amount of actual story in Destiny itself is
rather lacking. Sure bits and pieces of the grand scale story are
told through Grimoire cards, but that information should somehow be
also woven into the story of the game. Just because Destiny is going
to be a 10 year project does not mean that Bungie can just tell a
little story, explain nothing, and think people will be content with
that. Every story in Destiny as a series should be a self contained
story with a clear beginning and end. At the same time, they should
also fit together into one large picture at the end. Players should
not have to wait until 2024 to be able to understand the first story.
That isn't a ten year plan, that is just bad story telling.

In addition, there
should be more characters that play active roles in the story. The
only characters that actually do much of anything are the
personality-less player character, the Dinklage bot, and the Exo
Stranger (AKA Ms. I don't even have time to explain why I don't have
time to explain, because the writing in this game is on par with the
garbage in Resident Evil). Through some dialogue in the game and
information from the grimoire cards, it is clear that there are
plenty of characters that would be great additions to the actual
story. Why not have someone like Cayde-6 or even the Exo Stranger
accompany you on a mission or something like that? Better yet, why
not have an encounter with Toland or Osiris so that the story and the
grimoire cards feel a little more intertwined.

These are just a
few things that would help improve Destiny, and I'm sure there are
others that I haven't thought of. If you have any suggestions of
your own or comments, feel free to send them my way. Expect to see
more coverage on Destiny as December gets closer and more details
about The Dark Below are (hopefully) released.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

While I was going through my archive folder filled with a variety of articles I've written over the years, I found this one that I had written for my guild in World of Warcraft at the time. It was a journal I had been writing based on my experience in the beta for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. I figured I'd share it with everyone, so here it is. Enjoy!

The Beta Chronicles: Mists of Pandaria

April 19th, 2012 – 12:15
AM:

Roughly an hour and a half ago, I
heard news that more beta invites for Mists of Pandaria were being
sent out. Out of curiosity I checked my Battle.net Account and saw
that I had indeed gotten my invite into the Beta. I eagerly
downloaded the client and began to install the beta. It's still
currently installing as I type this, of course it didn't help that I
chose to play in the middle of that. I couldn't resist I suppose.

The brief time I spent in Beta was as
a cute little Blood Elf Monk named Reivan on the Lost Isles US
server. Only got the little belf to level 2 at present, but I
haven't really spent much time playing. One mysterious D/C later, I
transferred my Death Knight over to the same server. I tried to
start testing the new content right away... however I still had about
8 GB of data that needed to be installed judging by the fact that
everything froze in place and I was unable to talk to anyone.

Sadly I have a test in the morning,
so I will not be able to dedicate much time to the beta this evening.
I will get the beta fully installed and once I have more to talk
about I will add a new post to the Beta Chronicles forum topic.

April 19th, 2012 – 12:50
AM:

Only 3 GB left to download and install,
and since I had no trouble playing the beta on my monk, Reivan, I
logged in a little later to play some more and send heirlooms over to
her from my main. I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to play all
that much and I will stick to that. Probably gonna go to bed soon
after typing this up.

Already in the beta there are a couple
things I've noticed that are worth mentioning. First: Class Trainers
seem to be not used anymore. At level 3 I learned a new ability for
my Monk automatically without having to buy the new ability. Second:
They may have changed the scale of the cub mobs out in Eversong
Woods. I don't know, it's been awhile since I was out here in Blood
Elf territory and I don't recall the cubs being as small as they are
now.

Once I have played more of the monk I
will dedicate an entire entry on that very subject. Tomorrow's
priority will be checking out the new level 85 content out in
Pandaria. No worries, I will make sure to omit the spoilers.

April 19th, 2012 – 12:43
PM:

I was approached by a most unusual
creature this morning. I am told this creature is a Pandaren. He
told me that he had a once in a lifetime opportunity just for me
provided by the Lords of Blizzard themselves. I was both suspicious
and intrigued by this offer and I asked a few questions. He told me
that he could teleport me to the mystical land of Pandaria. My
curiosity got the better of me and I took the offer.

A few seconds later, I found myself
standing in a quaint village in the middle of a lush green forest.
The architecture of the buildings is unlike anything I've seen.
Unlike Orgrimmar, Pandaria is filled with buildings that re far more
aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps the Horde could sign a contract with
the Pandaren to overhaul Orgrimmar?

I saw no tasks or quests in the area,
so I got on my bike and traveled west, deeper into the Jade Forest
and Pandaria. The Jade Forest is a work of art. It is vibrant and
filled with interesting things to stop and look at. I found an
Archeology dig site nearby and began searching for fragments.
Interestingly enough, the dig site did not despawn after finding
three collections of fragments. Perhaps it is because it is the only
one that is available in the Jade Forest? It is around this time
that I realized I had not acquired the new skill ranks in my
professions. I decided to explore Jade Forest a little more and then
use a nearby portal to return to Orgrimmar.

There are many strange creatures in
Pandaria! In my travels I saw a strange looking creature with blue
fur and enormous spines that stuck out of its back. These spines
look very sharp, like they could skewer a dragon, I'd suggest caution
if you choose to approach such creatures. But as long as you don't
bother them they won't impale you. I've seen birds with long
stick-like legs, tigers, and frightfully large spiders.

While fleeing from pissed off bi-pedal
monkeys (I kinda sorta ran into their village thinking it was a
friendly area), I made it back to the town with the portal back to
Orgrimmar. At this time I made the discovered that the portal could
not be used without a Rune of Teleportation Reagent. Thankfully, a
fellow Horde player had one of those Mammoth mounts that has the
vendors. I was able to buy plenty of Runes of Teleportation in case
this change is applied to all portals in Azeroth. I also found a
food vendor, a Pandaren selling culture food. I bought some rice
cakes shaped like gears and springs...? Beta is beta so weird stuff
will happen I suppose.

I returned to Orgrimmar, bout the new
ranks for archeology, mining, and engineering. Once I was ready I
took a portal to the coast of Pandaria. I found some NPCs with
quests that need my help with various tasks. I will write more soon.

April 20th, 2012 – 1:35 AM

I've certainly had quite the adventures
in Pandaria today. Some fun, some not so fun. And of course I've
seen plenty of strange stuff as well. I'll start off with some of
the miscellaneous stuff I did today. I took a quick break from
quests in Pandaria and returned to Eastern Kingdoms to check out
Scholomance since it had been updated. That dungeon is so much
better now, granted I had to do it at low level since the heroic
requires to be level 90 and the current level cap is only 87.

First off, the lighting is away better
and the mobs are basically either ripped out of ICC or are running
around in Tier 10 gear. I guess Blizzard decided that they might as
well use the art assets since they are there in the game. Getting
back on topic I fought and killed the first boss, and found something
that surprised me. During the fight the boss will cause ice spike
walls of doom to shoot up from the ground and move closer to the
players... even after the boss has died. This mechanic is designed
so that if you even so much as touch a pixel of that ice wall it will
outright kill you. You read that right. Even on normal, level 40
dungeon mode, this mechanic will KILL YOU if you walk into it. This
made me happy.

Secondly, this dungeon is clearly still
a work in progress. There is no map for the dungeon and you can see
large neon green splotches on the mini-map. Then of course there are
the buggy achievements that exist in this dungeon. They are supposed
to be obtainable only in Heroic mode, yet I was able to get them by
playing normal level 40 version. I'm assuming this is a bug, since
the achievement says “Heroic” in it. Overall, new scholomance is
awesome and I can't wait to see the heroic version eventually.

I did try to get into a run of the
Temple of the Jade Serpent Dungeon located in Jade Forest.
Unfortunately, I think one of those little Sha critters got into the
LFG system somehow. When I got into a group and entered the instance
I got a message that said I was not in the group even though I was
and was almost immediately kicked out. The same thing happened to
the majority of my group while one of other guys got D/Ced almost
instantly. It goes without saying that this group did not last long,
didn't even make a single trash mob pull before it fell apart. You
win this time Sha critter thing, you win this time.

Not wanting to get back into questing
right away I decided to explore more of Pandaria. I went west,
looking for a way into the nearest zone which was Valley of the Four
Winds. Valley of the Four Winds is..... huge. It is also as
beautiful and vibrant of a zone as Jade Forest, Blizzard really
outdid themselves with the design of Pandaria. One thing in
particularly that caught my attention was the outside of the
Stormstout Brewery, a dungeon in Mists of Pandaria. Unlike the
outsides of dungeons we have seen in the past, this place was HUGE.
It really looked like a real building with an interior that could be
explored... if only it allowed people in. I ran around, did some
sight seeing, and then decided to try and go south into another zone.
Unfortunately this place is still 'locked' and Blizzard has the
anti-Explorer debuff active.

For those unfamiliar with the no-mans
land debuff, it basically activates and teleports you away from an
area that is designated as a place you should not be able to enter at
present. Generally it will teleport you out to the nearest entrance
of the zone you were just in before going into “forbidden land”.
This new debuff is way harsher. Not only did it teleport me, but it
teleported me to the other side of Jade Forest which was two zones
away from where I was. Rather harsh if you ask me.

While exploring Valley of the Four
Winds I found a strange mini-zone known as the Secret Path Way or
something like that. It was a narrow stairway into the mountains
that seemed like it had nothing of interest at first. Then I
discovered what appeared to be an entrance to a raid of some sort.
Naturally I walked into it, and went past the portal to see the
uninstanced interior. Unfortunately this lead into another locked
zone and resulted in me getting kicked out to Jade Forest again.

I spent some more time leveling my
blood elf monk after that. While my monk is only level 13 at
present, I am getting a better idea of what the monk class is going
to be like. In fact it reminds me a lot of the Diablo III monk.
Why? Because the current rotation and the abilities I have is
essentially fast pace martial arts. The damage on Fists of Fury is
insane and it can hit multiple targets at once, almost guaranteeing
dead mobs. Not only that but there has been little to no down time
between mob pulls. I can basically decimate an entire group of mobs
in less than a minute and be finished with a quest in no time at all.

My only regret is that I did not buy
bags on my main on live servers to transfer to my monk. Fortunately
I was able to procure some smaller bags that I can use while leveling
and I'll see if I can find some 16-slot bags as I go. Once I have
spent more time playing monk I will give an updated opinion on the
class, but so far I'm loving the new class.

I finally got back to doing the new
level 85 to 90 content on my Death Knight. I am about half way to
level 86 by now and some of the quests are kind of enjoyable later
on. They were boring at the initial start, but then they got
interesting as I progressed through the Jade Forest. Some quests are
bugged to hell, but that is not too much of a surprise really. Beta
is beta after all.

Anywho, with this game in Beta it's
common to see some... strange things at times. For example, I saw a
hunter who was using the tamed Chrommagus pet from Blackwing Lair.
Normally the size of these pets is reduced, but Chrommagus was his
full size. And then I saw either a large mountain gron or maybe
Gruul himself running around in Orgrimmar a few hours ago. Not sure
how the player behind that pulled that off, but it was certainly
entertaining. Beta has it's sights of interesting stuff. Giant
Tauren's wearing tuxedos, silly place holder messages, Heart shaped
fire works attached to dev note 'abilities', and many more things.

April 21st, 2012 – 2:12
AM:

Blizzard seems to be shooting
themselves in the foot in this beta. They want us to test, and I
assume they want people to provide feedback. But some of the choices
they have made do not make this doable in many regards. Player
population is insane right now, which makes me wonder if the whole
annual pass giving beta access was a good idea. Especially with
quests where the spawn rate of quest critical objects is insanely
slow and there are 40 people trying to compete for the same items.

In both PTR and beta, Blizzard has
always had a UI that allowed people to submit feedback and report
bugs. Yet for some reason, this is not the case in the Mists of
Pandaria beta. They added changes into patch 4.3.4 that created a
bug submission UI. This would help with testing, but for some reason
it is unusable in the beta. What is the point in testing if we can't
report any bugs we find? Does Blizzard not trust it's beta testers
to write good bug reports? I don't think they will ever do a beta on
this scale ever again, and I hope they don't. I doubt it is good for
much testing beyond stress test of the servers.

I wish there was more good news I could
post in this report but sadly there isn't much. I'm running out of
quests to do and player population is not making it easy to do the
ones that I can do. I'm going to see if I can get into a run of
Temple of the Jade Serpent in the next day or two along with
Scenarios if those are open for testing.

I might abandon any further attempts to
test the 85-90 content due to the sheer headache it is right now and
focus almost entirely on my monk and the pandaren mage I created a
day or so ago. But right now I could use some sleep.

April 21st, 2012 – 3:35
PM:

Today is going to be one of those,
nothing got done days in beta it seems. I leveled my blood elf monk
up to 15 today and got my first talent point. I spent it on the CD
reducer for the roll ability. After that I decided I had enough of
the Blood Elf zones and decided to pick up the quest to go to
Undercity and give Sylvannas her pendant.

That's when things began to go to hell
in a hand basket faster than you can say Murphy's Law. I went to the
Undercity translocator in Silvermoon City and I attempted to use it,
but for some reason the device was not responding. The theory was
that I needed a rune of teleportation to use it, but before I could
find a vendor the Sha of Disconnect struck and I got kicked off the
server.

I tried to reconnect multiple times but
got immediately disconnected seconds afterwards. The Sha of
Disconnect seems to be focused on me today. After uttering some
colorful words I left the beta and decided I was going to do
something else. Probably just log onto live server WoW.

April 22nd, 2012 – 5:15
PM:

My connection to the server has been
100% stable this afternoon, allowing me to make a lot of prgoress on
the Blood Elf monk. I discovered that the translocator from
Silvermoon to Undercity is either completely broken or deliberately
disabled. I had two options: Delete my blood elf and start a monk
elsewhere, or run through several level 40 zones to get to Undercity.
I couldn't bring myself to delete the blood elf monk, so I took the
hard route and began my journey south from Tranquil in the
Ghostlands.

The journey through Eastern Plaguelands
was surprisingly easy, I only had one death during the process. This
is thanks to a combination of skillful and tactical use of Roll along
with the sheer amount of open space in the Plaguelands. I moved from
flight point to flight point unlocking them so that this trip would
be easier when I had to return to blood elf territory inevitably to
get my racial mount in 5 levels. For some reason, I do not have
access to my account bound mounts like Tyrael's Charger.

Fortunately for me Blizzard's design
team looked upon me favorably. Once I unlocked the Light's Hope
Chapel flight point, the flight point for Undercity unlocked as well.
Thanks to this I was able to reach Undercity with only 2 pulls of
Level ?? mobs and 1 death. From Undercity I picked up a quest to go
to silverpine.

Future posts will give more details
about playing as a Windwalker Monk, once I feel I have enough
experience to be a credible source of information about the class.

April 25th, 2012 – 10:52
PM

It's been difficult to get much done
today in beta as I was hoping for. A new patch came in and I was
looking forward to writing multiple entries about it. Sadly the Sha
are growing stronger and have now spawned the Sha of Fatal Errors.
Lost Isles US is currently plauged by the Sha of Fatal Errors and
it's tendency to Fatal Error People out of the game seconds after
they log in to the game.

I've always found it awesome to watch a
game grow and develop as patches are added to the beta or new builds
are created. It's great to see changes occur or see annoying bugs
fixed. For example, the green gear I had picked up on my Death
Knight in Pandaria were using place holder models up until now. So
as a result, plate gear looked more like it was made out of leather
which was kind of silly. Now the questing gear looks pretty cool. I
will try to get a screenshot of it when I can actually log onto the
beta for longer than 45 seconds without getting struck by the wrath
of the Sha of Fatal Errors. Hell I plan to upload many screenshots
at the end of this journal showing my journey through the beta. I've
got some good ones already.

I haven't made much progress on the
monk either since my last report. But I did level her up a little
bit. I got this sweet ability called Death Touch where if a target's
health is equal to or less than mine I can insta-kill them. The cost
of this ability is 3 Chi. The only obstacle I face in leveling the
monk is the broken quests that scatter Azeroth. But I will endure in
the name of testing and stuff.

Hopefully in the next day or two I will
be able to update this journal with more content. I hear blizzard is
working on dealing with the Sha of Fatal Errors, as they had no plans
of implementing that particular variant of Sha.

April 26th, 2012 – 6:58 PM

Unfortunately I have not been able to
get much done today thanks to the Sha of Fatal Errors. It hasn't
been attacking every few seconds like yesterday, but it still hits
every couple of minutes. Which means I can get some work done, but
not much. As it stands right now, I seem to have reached a dead end
on my DK. I've done all the quests I had in my log, and I had to
abandon one quest that didn't seem to be working. But now I cannot
find that quest and without it I can't continue progressing through
Pandaria.

Quests are not very well connected
right now in the beta, and in order to find them you have to do some
searching. A difficult task while the Sha of Fatal Errors is running
rampant. I will have to hold off on any testing for the rest of the
day and try again tomorrow. Hopefully by then the Sha of Fatal
Errors will be more under control so that I can try and find more
quests. I have a pre-made DK waiting in the transfer que, so
hopefully soon I will have a back up toon in case I can't find any
quests on my real DK.

April 27th, 2012 – 2:00 PM

I was able to find two quests I was
unaware of while traveling around the Jade Forest. Unfortunately it
was only two which isn't enough and didn't lead me anywhere else.
Along the way though I saw many interesting things in the Jade
Forest.

I found a hub for what appeared to be a
faction that trains and races Cloud Serpents. Basically the WoW Art
Team took a bunch of pictures of mythical Chinese dragons and made
mounts based on them. There appears to be a questline of some sort
that allows you to train your own Cloud Serpent and eventually you
will have one as a mount to call your own. Unfortunately the
questline is either not open at this time or requires me to be higher
than level 85.

The next thing I stumbled upon was a
large statue of a green cloud serpent roughly in the center of the
Jade Forest. I went down to the statue to investigate, only to see
something most unusual. The sky became a dark purple, and then at
the very top of the sky was a bright circle of light that radiated
strange black tendrils mixed in with gray clouds. I do not know for
sure what that is about, but I have a good theory. The Sha. Right
or wrong, that unusual skybox has an ominous tone to it.

Speaking of the Sha, the Sha of Fatal
Errors still plagues the server. What used to be constant crashes
every few seconds or minutes is now completely random. I can go up
to ten minutes without a crash, while sometimes I can go up to five
minutes, and then sometimes it crashes almost immediately after I log
in.

The Weekend is coming, and there will
doubtlessly be server ques. With the Sha of Fatal Errors running
amok as well, this will cause down time between crashes to grow. It
will be difficult to continue testing with the way things are now.

April 29th, 2012 – 9:00 PM

Thankfully the Sha of Fatal Errors has
lost much of it's power and now only causes the game to crash rarely
instead of all the time. But the Sha of Disconnect has returned in
it's place. It is plaguing both quests and flight points. Complete
a quest? Get Disconnected. Select a flight point? Get
Disconnected. Good times.

I re-transferred my Death Knight over
to the Lost Isles server. I saw no other alternative other than to
start the pandaria quests all over again. It is unfortunate that
I've lost all that progress but oh well, I will remake it easily. I
will continue to level the blood elf monk as well, which is currently
sitting at 25.

Oddly enough I have yet to enter a que
to join the server this entire weekend. I wonder if enough people
have rage-quitted from the Beta to put an end to that. Honestly I'd
be okay with that, quality over quantity is important when it comes
to QA testers. I intend to make up for lost time caused by the Sha
of Fatal Errors.

I will focus on my Death Knight for
now, and once I've done all available quests in Pandaria I will
likely do the dungeons if I can get into a group. Then while I wait
for more content to become available I will level the blood elf.

Account-Wide Achievements were added
into the game during one of the recent patches, which is an
interesting system to look at. Pet Battles are accessible only to
level 90 players, so it will be some time before I am able to write
anything about that system. I was able to get it on my blood elf
monk before it was changed to level 90 required, so eventually I
might be able to test it early once I can get a pet or two on my
monk. Time will tell if that will actually work though.

April 30th, 2012 – 7:10
PM:

It was a wise decision to restart the
Jade Forest quests on my Death Knight. Thanks to a patch they added
in, I've been able to find not only more quests but they are starting
to connect way better than they had been in my first attempt. At
this current rate I should be able to get to where I was at AND I'll
be able to hit 86 during this process as well. As you can imagine
I'm pretty excited that I'm making progress in the name of testing.

I've also gotten to see more of the
main storyline for the Horde in the Jade Forest. Let's just say some
bad things happened, (NAME REDACTED) has somehow been captured by the
Horde. What exactly (NAME REDACTED) is doing there I do not know.
Either way, I'm not looking forward to when (NAME REDACTED 2) finds
out that (NAME REDACTED) has been captured. It goes without saying
this will not help matters since the Alliance and Horde are already
in open war now as of the start of this expansion.

Once I've run out of quests on the DK I
will refocus my efforts on trying to get into a Pandaria dungeon,
along with work on leveling the blood elf monk who is currently level
27. I really want to write about the monk but I'm a bit limited by
the fact I've only gathered 9 hours or so of total playtime on the
toon.

May 1st, 2012 – 12:40 AM

I managed to reach level 86 today. Not
only that but I'm nearing the end of the Jade Forest quests. I gotta
say, the storyline for the start of Pandaria has been great so far.
Especially with how they connect everything in the zone. You will
even be doing quests in the uninstanced version of the dungeon Temple
of the Jade Serpent, which is a really nice touch in my oppinion.

I also got to do some team work stuff
today. While doing this one quest where you have to defend an NPC,
the mobs were spawning way too fast and were a lot stronger than the
last time I did this quest on my first DK copy over. There was a
goblin mage who was having trouble with that quest, so we teamed up
and completed that quest and the follow up. Always good to help
others out every once in awhile. Especially if they are a fellow
warrior of the Horde.

I am being lead into the next zone, the
Valley of the Four Winds. Once I have completed the quests in Jade
Forest I will head there. From what I saw of it in my initial
scouting of accessible Pandaria, Valley of the Four Winds is huge.
It's at least as big as Dragonblight if not bigger. Lots to do in
beta, so little time.

Monday, September 1, 2014

So early last night around 2:00 AM EDT, Sony held their press conference for Tokyo Game Show which starts on September 18th. As to be expected there were a great deal of games shown during the conference, many of which will likely not ever make it to America or any other country. Among these games would be pretty much any Phantasy Star title, as they seem to not make it to the other side of the ocean more often than not.

Games not made by Japan were also discussed. This includes games like Destiny and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

In addition there was also talk about themes for both PS Vita and the PS4. Apparently they will be part of the 2.0 update, but no word on if the majority of popular games will have themes or how much themes will cost if they are available on the PlayStation Store.

Project Morpheus was shown off briefly, in which it showed footage from a game called Summer Lesson. The game appears to be about talking to some Japanese girl while being able to look in any direction. I can't help but wonder if there are going to be porn and hentai games on Project Morpheus or any VR device. It seems like they are begging for that kind of abuse.

In addition, there was some brief discussion about the new Silent Hills in all of its terrifying glory. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was very briefly mentioned, however more details about that game will be unveiled when TGS officially starts on the 18th.

Persona 5 was announced and Bloodbourne got a release date.

To end the show, Square Enix announced Dragon Quest Heroes. From what I can tell this appears to be Square Enix and Sony's attempt to one up Nintendo and Hyrule Warriors. They also announced a special PS4 themed off of the metal slime enemy from Dragon Quest games. As you can image, this variant will be exclusive to Japan.

Unfortunately, big games like Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy XV were not present at the press conference. Although there is a very good chance that both will be seen during TGS. Final Fantasy XV is much more likely to be shown, especially with the rumors going around about a May or March 2015 release date for the game.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

So today is the big day for the WoW Community. At last, a release date for the latest expansion of World of Warcraft has been revealed. World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will come out on November 13th, 2014.

The cinematic tells a story that sets the scene for the expansion and its time traveling extravaganza. As usual, Blizzard has done an astounding job with the cinematic. With the quality of their CG scenes, Blizzard really should consider opening a studio that makes feature films for StarCraft, Diablo, and Warcraft. Those films would do well, I guarantee it.

Hopefully the CG visuals for the Warcraft movie will be of the same caliber.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Gamescom could be considered the European equivalent of E3. This is usually a time in which developers show off all their latest games and what is coming up in the future. So I figured I would list a few things I've seen that are of interest to me personally.

First off is the announce of a PS4 version of both Journey and the Unfinished Swan. Journey was an experience unlike anything that has come before, and I look forward to going through it again on the PS4. I never got a chance to play Unfinished Swan, but I hear it is a spectacular game.

Next up I hear there will be some footage of No Man's Sky. Now if only they would give a release date for that game, it needs to come out ASAP.

343 Industries has been fairly active at Gamescom this year, showcasing an HD version of a map from Halo 2 known as Sanctuary. In addition the start date for Halo 5 Multiplayer Beta was revealed to start on December 29th and run for three weeks. Given that Halo 5 will not be out until November 2015, that means this is a legitimate beta and not some promotional tool like most betas or "Alphas".

I'll update this post as I see more stuff of interest. I know there were more games being announced, but lately there has only been a handful of games that I actually care about. Perhaps I've reached a point where only certain kinds of games will be of any interest to me.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Here is some footage of the Destiny Beta. This video covers the intro mission for Destiny, so if you don't want to be spoiled about anything in the campaign do not watch this video: I've also included links to videos from the Devil's Lair and the Shores of Time.

Today at Quakecon, gameplay footage of Doom 4 was revealed. Although it is not being called Doom 4 since it is meant to be a reboot and is instead being called "Doom". To be honest I thought Doom 3 was the reboot since it followed a different setting than the first two games. Unfortunately there is no video footage to go along with this news.

The new Doom is described as being very visceral in terms of the violence and gore. This also includes reports of enemies being able to tear limbs off of the player Dead Space style. I imagine this function will only come into play when the player runs out of health but there is no confirmation of that.

With any luck there will be an official press release with the gameplay footage for everyone who wasn't able to attend Quakecon but time will tell.

Friday, July 11, 2014

I've decided to do a new video series called One & Done over on YouTube. In this series, I will take a look at a video game and after playing it for awhile I will give my initial impressions along with a verdict on if I recommend that people get the game or not.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

I have seen my advertisements for these so called gaming glasses from GUNNAR. I did some research and it sounds like they did provide some benefits for the people who use them. What do these glasses do? It is said that GUNNAR glasses protect the users eyes from drying air currents, and that the lens reduces eye strain while improving contrast. It can also reduce glare and improves detail to help give the user clearer vision. On paper, it seems like these glasses are good for people who spend a lot of time staring at a computer screen.

I purchased the PPK model and figured I'd give it a try. Although they took some getting used to, I have noticed some of the difference they provide. While you would think that the amber colored lenses would be distracting, it isn't. The glasses do in fact improve contrast and get rid of glare. Even after being on the computer for the better part of the day, my eyes feel significantly less strained than they would normally.

At a glance, the glasses were very light and thin. To be honest, it looks like any amount of weight put on these glasses would destroy them instantly. Yet so far they have held together really well and they fit perfectly on my face.

These glasses are not without issues though. When I tried walking around with them on without looking at a digital screen, my eyes felt strained by it. Also, these glasses do seem to get finger prints on them really easily even if you are careful. Just lightly grazing the side with my finger resulted in a big blurry spot that took some effort to clean off.

If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, I would advise you to visit the GUNNAR website and see if there is a pair that suits you. Alternatively you can get them from Amazon, but then there are no options to get prescription lenses if needed.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Among the Bungie Community there is a day known as Bungie Day. Due to the companies love for the number seven, Bungie Day takes place on July 7th. In the past this was a time of new information for upcoming games, a free map for Halo 3, and a whole variety of things. There was even an event where players could win Steaks, but that is a story for another day.

So what have we learned from this year? Lots of info for the Destiny Beta, a trailer, and the announcement of a collector's edition for Destiny. There are three versions: the Limited Edition, the Digital Guardian Edition, and the Ghost Edition. I've included a picture of the Ghost Edition below:

The Limited Edition contains the following:

-Limited Edition SteelBook Case

-Guardian Folio, containing a field guide book that will list various weapons in-game, post cards from the "Golden Age", and a star chart.

-Collector’s Edition Digital Content:A unique Ghost Casing, and an exclusive player emblem, and an exclusive ship.

-Destiny Expansion Pass for the first two DLC expansions: The Dark Below and Den of Wolves. If you get the regular version of Destiny the Expansion Pass will cost $34.99, and each individual expansion will cost $19.99.

The Digital Guardian Edition comes with everything but the physical items listed above.

Then finally is the Ghost Edition which comes with everything in the Limited Edition along with memorabilia from the game like pictures of first contact with the traveler, and a full scale, motion sensing replica of the Ghost. It lights up and will even talk, so if you ever wanted a robot that is voiced by Peter Dinklage on your desk, this is for you.

More information was given on the beta as well. As you may know from E3, the beta will start on PS3 and PS4 on July 17th. Then the Xbox 360/Xbox One beta will start on the 23rd. See the chart below for more information:

Not only that but everyone who pre-orders Destiny will receive early access to the Vanguard Armory which will consist of weapons, armor, and an emblem. It is unclear if this is exclusive gear or if this is gear that can be earned in game without the Armory.

Here is a trailer for the beta, with a few new snippets of footage. Enjoy!

No word if there are any more announcements coming from Bungie today, but I'll keep you posted. Stay tuned and be sure to watch IGN for coverage of the beta this week.